Classes will start Monday

The Public School System will begin the school year Monday, PSS Commissioner Rita Sablan said yesterday, as maintenance workers were finishing the installation of generators and water pumps at each school and Head Start site.

“I hope providing water will not be a problem because we have reserve tanks. Schools have been asked to check water tanks to make sure there is enough. And generators have been procured,” she said.

In August, Gov. Benigno R. Fitial asked Board of Education chair Lucy Blanco-Maratita to consider pushing back the start of school for two weeks, or until the island has reliable power. Last week, the board decided to start school as scheduled.

“We want to avoid canceling classes during the day because it costs too much to cancel,” Sablan said. “The [PSS] leadership [board members, principals, Sablan] got together to identify solutions in how we can continue to operate during the school day without disruption.”

Ensuring student welfare is important, especially sanitation issues in regards to the bathroom, Sablan added.

Without power, bathrooms do not receive the water needed to flush toilets.

On Tuesday, Fitial asked the Department of Public Health to make sure that schools are prepared to start Monday. Workers from the Division of Environmental Quality went to each school to check the water and make sure generators were in place.

Sablan said the generators should be installed at the 20 public schools and Head Start sites by today.

Some teachers and parents have expressed concern about starting school without reliable power. A group of 16 parents wrote a letter to the Saipan Tribune yesterday appealing to the Board of Education to reconsider their decision and push back the start of school, because children will have a difficult time learning during the day and sleeping during the night.

At yesterday’s PSS Professional Development, teachers expressed similar sentiments.

“I’m really concerned about it. We won’t be able to deliver instruction. It’s going to have an impact on our instruction,” a teacher from Marianas High School said.

Schools hours are not the only time students are going to be affected by the outages, the teacher said.

“How about homework? How are they going to do that?” the teacher asked.

Last school year the outages weren’t as severe, and even then, the teacher said, there were days when teaching was nearly impossible.

Tim Williams, a Hopwood Junior High School physical education teacher, said he is torn on the issue of starting school Monday. He said he thinks it’s OK to start on Monday, “but I agree with the concerns of the parents.”

Sablan said she has not had any phone calls from parents expressing concern.

“The response we’re getting from parents is to begin classes on Monday,” she said. “I haven’t received any phone calls. I’m really very happy with the response from the community about starting classes on Sept. 8.”

Aggreko generators, adding 15 megawatts of power, are expected to reach full capacity by Sept. 16 or 17. Members of the Governor’s Strategic Economic Development Council, which urged the governor to recommend pushing back the start of school, said there concern was that once the PSS schools were up and running and demanding power, the engines would be stressed and blackouts might occur.